


Infinite Realms (Beta)

by Guardian_Rex



Category: Danny Phantom, W.I.T.C.H.
Genre: Gen, Jack is not a moron, Maddie is not a moron, Magic, Mainly Danny Phantom for the first half, Multi, They act as close to real people as I can manage: it's the Fentons though so don't expect too much, Vlad has tact, i am mixing the comic with the show for WITCH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2018-08-20 07:31:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8241370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guardian_Rex/pseuds/Guardian_Rex
Summary: Some worlds were cut off from others by the Heart of Infinity long before Mirimor/Meridian fell to Phobos.  One of those worlds was under the rule of Pariah Dark at the time.  Now that Veil that holds in the world of Spirits is broken.  what shall become of the earth?  of Kandrakar?  of Meridian?





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK SO I'm gonna be honest, this has been rewritten a bit already just... need to get back to writing this. however, I want to notify you all that I have in fact found the scientific explanation for literally all things in Danny Phantom's Ghost Zone (not literally, I can't expect that of any one person to surmise) so here's a link http://jayrockin.tumblr.com/post/161669936293/ive-spent-the-past-few-months-attempting-to follow that and enjoy the SCIENCE

“Hello, dear readers of whatever age that you are.  My name - at the moment - is Goliath.  I’m here to tell you a story about the multiverse.  Well,” he chuckled.  “Perhaps not all of it.  I’m going to tell you about a specific universe, and a bundle of its timelines.  Now, before we begin, I’d like to give a little lesson on the universe and its dimensions and how they are able to touch and interact.  Parallel lines never intersect, yes?  Well, that only holds true if the plain upon which the lines exist is constant.  You know, flat, boring, never changing.  If that space bends, then it no longer holds true.  On a spherical plain, any two parallel lines actually intersect at two points.  And Time and Space bend around the center of the universe, the universe being a multilayered spherical plain.  Thus, there are infinite points of intersect at any given time, though with this simplified model we have the smaller infinity - such as an infinity of only whole numbers.”  He shrugged, waving off the issue.  “Oh well, we’re not going into pocket dimensions at the moment, so there’s no need to think too much on that.

Think of each dimension as a line, parallel to each other dimension.  Now, since there are infinite points of intersect, there’s an infinite amount of places and times at which this intersect could bridge the two dimensions.  If someone or something were to, I dunno, force one of these bridges to stabilize, you’d have a portal to another dimension forced right open for you.  The trick is to make sure that you’re traveling across a layer of Space, and not Time, otherwise, things get weird and possibilities get erased and altered, and I’ll have to correct the error I’ve detected in the coding of reality.  Blah blah blah.”  He pointed at a sphere of various changing colors, a grin on his face.  “You’re not interested in the consequences of something like that, though, now are you?  No, you want to know about something special that happens when two dimensions touch.

“Here we have a universe, and we’ll be looking here at the story of a select group of people.  Now, keep in mind: people is a rather relative term, just like alien.  Anyway, we’ve got two stories that someone - that would be moi - has decided to mash into each other and meddle with.  After all, I wrote the code, I can alter it as I so, please.  You get to read the results!

“With that out of the way, I bring you a fun little piece of story.  Dive in and tell me what you think.”

* * *

_We'll start our little story with a boy.  He has bright blue eyes, pitch black hair, and a love of space and all things to do with the stars.  Can you guess who he is?  Here's a couple more hints: his mother and father are the leading scientists in the field of paranormal studies, metaphysics and the like.  things that no one really believes in.  his father is one of the best mechanical engineers in the world, his mother a top data analyst, as well as a great biochemist.  together, they've managed to do a great many of amazing things with technology.  One of those things that's still a work in progress is the construction of a portal between dimensions - something that they've been trying at since their college days twenty years ago._

_he has some friends, a techno geek by the name of Tucker Foley who he's made a few small things with, along with sharing basically everything since childhood, and a vegan goth named Sam Manson that he met in middleschool.  The three are practically inseparable, always at either Tucker or Danny's house or at some other hang out.  Danny's told his friends about his parent's latest project - though their great interest in it makes Danny feel a mite nervous.  oh well, it's not as if anything bad will come from a little curiousity, right?_


	2. Episode 1: Pilot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny shows his best friends a lab that he's not supposed to be in without his parents. Bad Things ensue. Clockwork has a headache of a meeting ahead of them.  
> also i gave the Ghost Zone a more proper name than Spirit World.

"And this," Danny gestured grandly at the chrome covered area in general. "Is the FentonWorks Laboratory. This is where my parents - and me and Jazz if we get permission - come down to make our amazing inventions. Mainly the Gravity Inverters™, but I don't know if the general public is ready for that yet." he shrugged. "I just know that once I have my license for a motorcycle, I'm going to make a hovercycle."

" _ We're _ making a hovercycle," Tucker emphasized, a grin tugging at his lips as the geek's wandering gaze refocused on his best friend. "Don't think I'm not gettin on that bad boy once it's done. Then we can ride to school in style!" He walked over to a table near the door where he saw blueprints for some vehicle. "You started building a rocket and didn't tell me?"

"What? Dad's making a rocket?" Danny ran over and snatched up the blueprints, looking them over. "Nah, that's not a space ship but with a few modifications…"

"I hate to interrupt attack of the Geeks," Sam snorted, pushing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. "But are you gonna tell us about that giant hole in the wall Danny?" The goth pointed her thumb in the direction of a gaping hole, ringed by an octagonal metal frame. Cables linked it to a control panel on it's right, which led to a large computer with three monitors pressed against the wall. "I mean, that's a real eye catcher, don't you think?"

"I guess," he shrugged, tone as dry as he could get it. "But I mean, it's not like you can't find holes in the walls of nature… or downtown, really. Giant wall holes aren't special." Sam rolled her eyes with a grin and Tucker snickered as the raven haired boy walked over to the metallic tunnel and waved at it. "What makes  _ this _ hole in a wall so special, you ask?" His voice, a bit high from the changes of puberty, dropped to a dramatic pitch.

"Yes," Sam indulged, holding back her laughter better than her meat loving friend. "I do ask. What is so amazing, o great Fentini?" Danny snorted, breaking character for a moment, and the vegan grinned wider.

"This hole in the wall is special because it was put here by world-renowned scientists, Jack and Maddie Fenton~" he drew out his last name with a grin as he gestured to the control panel. "It's meant to open a gateway between worlds, allowing us to prove to the world that alternate dimensions exist! What's on the other side of the portal? Elves? Hideous alien monsters? Omnicidal robots?"

Tucker raised his hand, pointing to the exposed hole. "Oh, I believe it's concrete and darkness. Possibly some circuitry and plumbing?" His friends gave the geek a flat stare and he shrugged. "Sorry man, it looks like it's not exactly… working?"

"That's because it's still a work in progress Tuck, just like I told you in the park," the young scientist let out a sigh and turned to peer into the darkness, as though it would provide all of the answers to the universe if he stared at it hard enough. "I wonder what's wrong with it, though. Mom and Dad checked, double checked, and quadruple checked, and this spot is where the world should intersect with another. I've even read over their notes; it's all theoretically sound."

Sam raised a skeptical brow, though her friend didn't see it immediately. "They let you look over their notes?" The faux innocence painted on the face he showed her was answer enough. "I thought not, you sneaky snake."

"Am I Apophis, Jörmungandr, or some other special serpent?" When the goth playfully smacked his arm, he stuck out his tongue with a grin.

"So, what went wrong in the practical phase of this portal?" Tucker sat in one of the two swivel chairs before the computer and stared at the screen. "What would they use as passwords?"

"Flowery Judgement," Danny answered, moving to pull the geek away from the controls. "And I don't think you should be rooting around in their files. I'm not exactly allowed down here, or in their notes for the portal or anything big like that. We're lucky Jazz hasn't come down to bust us." Tucker sighed and stood, shoulders drooping. "And we're not sure what the practical error is. Like I said, all the science checks out logically, so it should work."

"Maybe it's a mechanical error?" Sam pulled out her old camera, the one her Nana got her for her fourteenth birthday just last month and snapped a photo. "Why don't you go in and check genius junior? You're pretty smart, and you've read the notes."

Blue eyes widened at the thought - one that had been running through his head since his parents announced that the portal wasn't operational - and he turned to look at the portal. "That's crazy Sam; I don't have a hazmat suit on or anything to go into the potentially hazardous gateway to another world."

"Aren't they here?" Tucker opened a large locker on the left side of the portal pressed against the wall. "Where they've always been? I remember you saying that your mom had made one in your size just a year ago."

"And if you manage to fix it before your parents get home, imagine how proud they'll be." Sam knew that unlike her, the approval of his parents meant a lot to Danny. And he was her best friend, one of the people she'd happily walk into a fire with. That's why, when she saw him open his mouth with protest in his eyes, she cut him off with a sigh. "Just ten minutes? Then, we can get to the Dumpty Humpty concert and pretend we were never down here."

"You'll actually let it go?" The youngest Fenton held a deal of skepticism in his tone, but he had every right to be. Sam was stubborn in getting what she wanted and was more likely to drag a hundred pound weight around than let something go. "If I take just ten minutes to go in and see if there're any problems in the wiring or whatever that I can fix, you'll let it drop, and we can go to the concert?" She nodded, and he held out his hand. "You have a deal, my Hufflepuff friend."

"Agreed, Gryffindork," the Goth grinned and shook his hand, moving forward to snap more pictures while he changed into his jumpsuit.

Unfortunately, the suit was a year old, and he hadn't worn it in about two months. Chemicals were more his mom's thing, so he had little reason to wear more than a simple lab coat he kept in the closet of his room.  The one piece suit was too tight to wear over his clothes. Pulling off his white and red NASA shirt, faded to the point that the letters were no longer visible, and denim jeans, Danny got down to his boxers and managed to just barely fit the white hazmat suit on, making sure that the black boots belt and gloves were on snugly.

Turning to the portal he walked inward, reaching for the flashlight attached to his belt a couple of steps in when he realized the light from the lab didn't quite reach in and discovered a raised panel. He tripped, stumbling forward, and reached out with his left hand to catch himself. When he heard a click and a high pitch whirring, Danny cursed his ambidextrousness. The circuits within the machine lit up with acidic green light, blinding him for a moment. He turned in the next to try and run out of the tunnel, but the agony hit him.

Danny found himself in too much pain to do much else than scream.  Electricity and green light charred his skin, boiling his blood, melting his organs, reducing his bones to ash, lighting his brain on fire. But he was in pain on more than a physical level, though he didn't know that. He didn't know that even his very soul was on fire in that moment, wreathed in the radiation of a world that he was never meant to touch. His scream was one that reached the ears of his friends, his sister two floors up, the neighbors next door, the residents of the other world: in the burning light of the event horizon, all could hear the scream of the boy who was eaten by lightning and swallowed by the river Styx.

Finally,  _ finally _ , he could make his muscles respond. He was able to make himself move. Every molecule felt as though it were led, but he staggered forward, and when he fell, Danny landed on chrome tiles. The last thing he heard was the sound of Sam and Tucker calling out his name, and then he accepted the sweet embrace of unconsciousness with open arms.

* * *

 

Jazz ran down the stairs two and three at a time, dialing her parents at the same time with no regard for how dangerous that was.  “Mom, Dad, I heard a scream from the lab!  It sounded like Danny!”  She landed on the tile platform just as a flash of whitelight faded and let out a gasping scream when she saw her baby brother in his friends’ arms.  “DANNY!  He’s hurt, come home quickly!”  She ran over and pulled her baby brother away from the two of them and winced.  “He’s got steam and smoke coming off of him, it smells like burnt nitrile rubber and- the portal!  It’s on and Danny’s barely breathing!”

“What happened to my son?!”  Jack bellowed as his wife repeated their daughter’s words in panic.  The tires screeched as he made a U turn - traffic laws be damned - and sped back towards their home while Maddie dialed 911.  “Hold in there Danny boy, papa’s comin!”  As he peeled down the road, the image of their SUV blurred before shifting to something else.  The mirror showed what the vehicle would become once their modificatoins were done, and many would question if such a vehicle were even legal.

The other mirrors in the room shifted and blurred between pasts, presents and futures before the being observing them.  The blue skinned spirit wore a purple tunic, gray gloves, and a violet cloak. Upon their arms were six different watches, from their black belt hung a pocket watch, and in their chest was the face and pendulum of a grandfather clock. Each timepiece kept the time of a different world, ticking on at various times but all in sync. Blank red eyes peered up into the variety of giant mirrors lining the walls of their observation room, tail swaying in rhythm with the heartbeat of Giestael.

They watched the paths of the boy and his friends intertwine with that of six girls, each a force to be reckoned with in their own right.  Mature yet dramatic, intelligent yet passionate, wise yet effervescent, light-hearted yet forceful, determined yet insecure, powerful yet naive.  Clockwork saw confrontations, friendships, and battles in the future for them all.  Yet that was the most they could determine out of the possibilities.

Were it not for a certain fool attempting to play Switzerland, several threats that brought upon the need for these girls could have been circumvented.  “Well,”  Clockwork sighed as they turned from their mirrors and floated down the corridors of their Citadel.  “I’ll simply have to make him see reason.  Time Out.”  As they entered a room marked with a clock, Clockwork mentally braced themselves for the company of the other Time Keepers.

A room made of every shade of blue - pulsing, swirling, shifting around - held few objects. A simply-designed table of mixed green and pink wood separated by blue dominated the area.  Twelve chairs surrounded it, seats for twelve entities, some of whom slowly began to appear from the ether.  

An olive-skinned man, inhumanly perfect body toga-clad, whose eyes were pits of darkness and decay.  A skeleton with cracks in its skull that led both up and down to its eyes dressed in a black jacket and surrounded by skeletal hands.  A four hundred pound infant with a dual triangle on the center of its brow.  A seemingly normal human wearing a lab coat, pulling out a gold pocket watch to check the time.  A woman with dark, white, brown hair and three eyes who sat with her back straight and fiddled with strings of light.  A lion with fur several shades of brown and a mane that was lit up with fire and smoke. As each appeared, Clockwork took their place and waited.  The last to arrive was a man with a bald head, a white goatee, and C-shaped symbols on his temples.

“Now that everyone is here,” Clockwork said into the silence, garnering everyone’s attention from their chatter.  “There is a matter I wish to discuss before certain actions are taken that might disrupt the time stream.”

“Is this about the boy, Clockwork?”  The infant asked, voice deep due to size.  “He has caused quite a bit of trouble over all of the time streams, and it makes me wonder why you protect him.”

“Perhaps because you feel responsible for the future that you impose upon him time after time?”  Kronos, the patricidal bastard, sneered at the spirit.  Why did they allow his continued existence?  “After all, you must have some form of conscious under all of that enigmacy nibling?”  Clockwork silently commended their uncle for using such a new word.  They’d have to give him a cookie later.

“I protect him,” Clockwork started slowly, gripping their staff tightly to remain calm.  “Because not only is he my responsibility, but also the path of least resistance towards a brighter future.”

“Or, a devastating one.”  A soft and light voice carried across the table, and ruby eyes focused on the robed young man directly across from them.  “With the veil over Giestael torn down by young Daniel’s actions, the dangers of the Spirit World are now loosed upon the universe!  Surely such a crime cannot go unpunished!”  Pale blue eyes were narrowed in rarely seen anger, and Clockwork felt the same emotion flare up in their core.

“A crime that should not go unpunished, Himerish, is your own.”  Clockwork pointed their staff at the Oracle of Kandrakar with a snarl.  “You could have helped us, could have sent the Guardians that you had at the time to aid in the war against Pariah, but instead of helping or allowing other worlds to do so, you sealed off my world!”  Some of the other timekeepers saw where this conversation was headed and promptly left the room.  Even Scaevola, who could not reform his molecules anywhere else in the Realms for another thousand years.

“It is the duty of Kandrakar to maintain the peace of the worlds and push back threats,” Himerish argued, hands pressed against the line on his part of the table.  “Geisteal warranted a major threat to the cosmos and had to be quarantined!  Is it not the role of Infinity to keep Eternity in check, Prometheus?”

Clockwork’s eyes widened, and green fire burned across their form with their fury.  They had not held that name for eons and t weren’t about to take it again.  “Just as it is the role of Eternity to do the same to Infinity!”  They slammed their staff down on the river of time that flowed around them all, images of destruction and carnage playing out before the eyes of the Council.  “We were cut off from the entire universe because of you!  We had to fight a millennia-long war that would have taken no more than a decade with proper allies.  Countless lives and afterlives were lost because of you!  I lost my ability to affect the Realms and thus, regulate your activity when you cut me off.”

“Unlike Geisteal, Kandrakar has shown no need for outside regulation, Prometheus.”  Himerish let out a breath of offense before attempting to regain his composure.  It was evident by the swirls of pink that ebbed from his body that it was superficial at best.  “I have allowed the course of Time to flow as it will, without interruption or interference.  Unlike you, I do not meddle where I do not need to.  If the universe so wills something to happen, then it will happen.”

“Such reliance upon Destiny is a sign of naivete,” Paradox, the human professor, pointed out with a look of irritation.  “You have the power to change things for the better, yet you would allow disaster after disaster to occur in the name of allowing Time to run its course?”

“Time knows no morals or differences such as better or worse, Paradox.”  A woman with curls as dark as night accused.  “To interfere as you do is a disruption in how things ought to be.  Though, in this, the Titan’s desire lies.  Oracle, your request to punish the boy would be interfering with an event that has happened over nearly all of the timelines.”

“The boy’s action creates a breach in an essential barrier against threats the cosmos has not seen in thousands of years, Hemsut.”  The robed man let out a sigh and shook his head.  “It is my job to protect the Infinite Realms.”

“Your words now contradict each other, Himerish.”  The triclops tutted in her three voices and held up a thread of light to examine with one eye.  “You wish not to interfere with the timeline, yet you wish to act against Destiny for the sake of your secondary job?  You show inequity in this situation of a morally neutral concept.”

“Time itself knows no scruples, and yet we who have the paramount to change its furtherance and alter the causatum of history do, Norn.”  The skeleton - no, revenant - pointed out, half of his seven hands gesturing as he spoke.  “If we do not recondition things for the better, then why should we wield such power in the first place?”

“And who is to say that which is better?"  A two-headed male pointed out.  "So long as the world itself continues, the fate of the inhabitants is not the concern of Time."

"And if the residents capable of dying who live in those dimensions and timelines can lead better, fuller happier lives, fewer of them pose any threat and those that do present far lesser dangers and potential cataclysms to their world and the neighboring ones that tend to get into a tizzy when such dangers are presented," the grey-eyed professor argued.  "Without life for the world to hold, it shall crumble from imbalance and lack of purpose and die."

"This council exists to eliminate such threats," the triclops reminded.  "To avoid doomsday."

"And so we must achieve that intent through carcinogenic extort alone?"  Blue and orange eyes flared up like neon lights in the darkest of pits.  "We should allow Destiny to onset people into veers where they can only lash out in hopes of a better future, and then destroy them when they try to make things fit in an erroneous way?  Can we not hinder them from experiencing such horrors, or at least usher them to better ways afterward?"

"If we were to interfere in such a way, we would be acting as though we were the ones in charge of the universe," Himerish stated, eyes cold as he stared ahead.  Directly at Clockwork.  "We are the protectors, vanguards, and sentinels of the Realms, not its gods."

"And as is protectors," Clockwork bit back, crimson gaze full of ire.  "We should strive to keep atrocities from happening.  If you had acted with wisdom or compassion, the afterlives of innumerable beings would have been saved, the souls of my people spared, and my home planet would not be a scattered field of one hundred and forty-five asteroids."

"And what would you have prevented that I supposedly allowed to happen, Prometheus?  Who would you have saved?"

"I would have prevented the Death of Cassidy."  The council was silent.  Only the ticking of various time pieces chipped away at the suffocating quiet.  "I would have helped that poor little boy with the issue of his depression and mutism; I would have addressed the poison within Narissa's heart, I would have prevented Phobos' enslavement of metamoor, I would have done a great many things to ease the weight of your folly, your arrogance, and your laziness."

"I have no need for your advice, nor your reprimand, Prometheus."  The hiss that escaped Himerish's lips was a sound of such rage that the other timekeepers knew not the Oracle was capable of.  He opened his mouth to continue but was cut off by the sound of a heartbeat.  No, the sound of two.

Two rhythms pulsated through the space that was time and permeated the very being of all the gathered entities.  Two spheres -one a star of pink, the other one of Emerald - appeared over the center of the table, and a body formed around the two.  What seemed to be a ten-year-old human child at a glance solidified atop the table and stood with his hands on his hips.  Where one would expect white, there was green.  Floating within those pools of green were circles of magenta.  The boy was covered in markings of every conceivable language, and each glowed various colors - many beyond the eyes of mortals.  He glared down at the two quarreling Timekeepers, disapproval written clearly across his face.  "Honestly, you two."  The being's voice held deceptive youth, but with a wave, the energies of life and death that rolled off Himerish and Clockwork ceased.

"Clockwork and those on their side; calm your shit, things happen and sometimes you just gotta deal with the consequences.  Sometimes your power will not be enough to prevent a cataclysm.  Himerish and those on his side; fuck you, because you are in fact able to do something about the problems of others and just don't want to.  Don't hide behind the intricacies and delicacies of Time to mask the fact that you simply don't want to do the Thing."  There were nods all around the table before this being turned his attention entirely to the Oracle.  "And Himerish?  Veiling Geisteal was a dick move.  Not only that, but it did, in fact, go against the balancing act that you and Clockwork are meant to be doing.  This is one of your crimes, and I shall not see you enacting justice upon those who fall under Clockwork's jurisdiction until said person falls under yours as well.  Danny shall continue as Clockwork so deems fit, and if they decide to be a dick about the kid's future, that's entirely up to them, not you."

"Yes, Lord Goliath."  If there was one authority that got the final say, it was the Guardian of the Balance.  Himerish's pride as the Oracle would not interfere with his wisdom of heeding Goliath's word.  "I shall act as you have declared."

"Good.  And Clocky?"  Goliath turned to grin at Clockwork.  "When you get the chance, dance a little dance with the kid, will ya?"

* * *

 

While she checked over her brother's vital signs as best as she could, Jasmine Fenton unleashed the full verbal fury of a sister enraged upon his friends. "How could you all do something like this? The lab is off limits to everyone without mom and dad's permission for a reason! Going into the portal like that was a dumb idea and as brash as Danny is, I know he wouldn't go in without a push from one of you, so how the hell could you not bring yourselves to think 'a lab full of experimental equipment and potentially hazardous chemicals, that unfinished humungous project in the wall is probably the deadliest thing here!" She yanked off his hazmat suit, exposing flesh that was scorched with raw red, zigzag lines. Lichtenberg scars littered his body. It was incredible that he was even breathing, if barely. "He could have died! You all could have died! The house could have exploded if something was done wrong, are you all insane or just fucking stupid?!"

Sam and Tucker both took the verbal abuse with heads hung in shame and eyes full of fear. Tucker was shaking, and Sam was paler than a sheet of paper. Danny was so still, they both feared that if they were to blink too many times the tiny rise and fall of his chest would stop and he'd simply die. That scream… it was a sound that would haunt them for the rest of their lives; there was no doubt in that.

Jack and Maddie arrived on the scene in mere minutes, uncaring of the speed laws that Jack had broken to get them there in time. 

"Danny!"  They cried out at once, moving to his body faster than Sam or Tucker could track.  "My baby boy, what have you done to him?"  Maddie glared at her son's friends - if they could still be called that - and reminded herself that assaulting minors would get her in jail and away from her kids.  "How dare you even come down here without getting our permission?  This is a closed off area, restricted from any eyes but our own unless we say otherwise!  Look at what you did to my baby boy!"  She cradled Danny in her arms and stood with him.  He felt cold and limp in her embrace, no tension in his body at all like there was when he slept.  Even unconscious, Danny would curl up as soon as something touched him.

"If our boy doesn't make it, then you two better get your best-damned lawyers because we'll press charges until you're punished for this to the fullest extent of the law."  Jack roared at the two, his size being a particularly intimidating factor that neither ever considered before. If I knew this would happen, I'd have set up a lock that keeps you both out of our house!"

"Jack, we need to get Danny to the hospital immediately!"  Maddie bolted for the stairs, followed by her giant of a husband.

The horror on their faces, the thunder in their voices - it nearly made the teens cry. Tucker could feel tears welling up in his eyes as his best friend was carried out of the lab and up to the SUV. Jazz sat in the back, holding onto Danny, and making sure that he didn't get hurt on their way to the hospital. Sam began to follow after them on foot - Tucker followed and passed her to her great surprise. He hated hospitals, feared them with a passion great enough to burn a forest down. It didn't matter, not when Danny could die because of them. He had to be there for him. They both had to be there for him. There was no other way.

* * *

 

_ The darkness of unconsciousness did not give him true rest. He floated in a void, where he could hear nothing. The silence didn't last long, howling winds that bit through his flesh and seeped into his bones. Opening his frost covered eyes, Danny looked out and saw a tall figure dressed in black and white in the distance. A blink and the figure was a mere two feet away from him. Black eyes that glittered like frozen tar, near hidden by bangs that hung just above them, the river of ebony locks flowing behind the sturdy man's back down to where his elbows rested. Deep violet wings spread out from his back and blocked out the void behind the man, who towered over Danny.  The teen needed to look up just to meet his eyes. _

_ "So," an oily voice spilled from the man's lips, echoing in the empty space that Danny assumed to be either the afterlife or his head. "You are the child that she gave life to, eh?" The boy opened his mouth - to scream in terror, make a quip, or answer  _ with  _ a question he didn't know - but found that he couldn't speak. Not a sound would come from his own mouth. "Worry not, boy," the man tried to reassure him, an icy cold hand resting on his shoulder. "I will not harm you, and here you are safe, for now." _

_ Looking into the other's pitch black shirt, he saw faces shifting and moving in the fabric, and could hear muted screams coming from the man's white jacket. This did little to inspire trust or safety in him. "You should count yourself lucky, boy." Blue eyes rose up to meet those orbs of void once more. "Not many are allowed to visit me in this place without being truly and permanently dead. You, however, have been given a gift from the Spirit Mother. As such, I'll tell you about the world that you opened a path to." The man's left wing folded onto his back, and Danny was granted the sight of a sea of green. "First of all, unlike you humans, I am aware of the Name of my world. Careful not to tell too many people this name, though, alright?" Not seeing much of a choice, the boy nodded as he was pulled along through the void of emerald energy that arced and swirled like flares of a star. _

_ "This world, which those who have moved in have begun to call the Ghost Zone, is actually named Geistael." Guy- _ stee _ -all? That definitely rolled off the tongue. "I'm not the one who chose the name, She is. She being the world herself, of course." _

* * *

 

Jazz, Jack, Maddie, Tucker and Sam all sat in the uncomfortable chairs in the hospital lobby, waiting to hear about Danny's condition. Sam's heart was heavy with guilt, having been the one who pressured him into entering the machine.  _ How could I have been so stupid? _ She berated herself internally.  _ Danny didn't really want to go into the damn machine; he wanted to just show us the lab and go to the concert! Why did I push him to go in?  _ Her face had never been in such a dark scowl, even when she tried to get mad at her parents or seem as depressing as possible.  If her eyes could be trusted, her mouth sure as hell couldn't, then Sam was sure that she had even seen Danny’s ghost.

Tucker had his eyes closed and was doing his best to focus not on the hospital around him. He focused on Danny, and how the younger teen needed his support. Sure, he never really believed in stuff like that, higher powers or intelligences that decided the goings on of the universe. But if it helped Danny… if it helped Danny, Tuck would pray to every god under the sun and over it. Danny had been his friend since they were seven years old and they had spent every moment together, sharing everything that they could. He wouldn't allow his best friend - his brother - to go through something like this while he sat at home trying to forget everything just because he was in a place of medicine.

Jazz was split between worry and fury. How could she allow something like this to happen on her watch? She should have gone down and made sure they went to the concert not go down to the lab and get Danny hurt! She had been reading a psychology textbook in her room when all of the electronics flickered and some sort of pressure washed over the room from the ground up, leaving a cold static to tingle her skin. She hadn't even a moment to wonder what happened before she heard her brother's screams.

Jack held a frown as deep as the Marianas trench on his face, hand clasped around his wife's smaller, shaking one to give support and to get it. Something inside the machine must have gone wrong, something must have been miswired, something must have delayed the start up. Something he had done wrong may nearly have cost his son his life. How does one live with that kind of weight on their soul?

Maddie's foot wouldn't stop tapping, nor would the fingers of the hand that wasn't holding onto Jack for dear life. Every fiber of her being was telling her to lash out, attack whatever it was that was hurting her baby boy so that he could wake up and be safe and in her arms again. She wanted to tear into something, wanted to hold her Danny close and never let him go. She wanted to disassemble the lab and set it ablaze, go back and undo the mistake of creating the portal so that Danny would never have been hurt like this.

Tucker perked up from his slump, back ramrod straight as his eyes opened, flecks of yellow dotting the peridot orbs. He felt something, some spark that left ghost static rolling over his skin and raised goose bumps under his warm sweater. "Danny's ok." Before the words left his mouth and drew the attention of everyone gathered, he felt the spark again. It was almost like a pulse. A slow, weak pulse but it was there. "I don't know how I know, but I do."

Jazz and Maddie opened their mouths, about to tell Tucker off for spouting nonsense at a time like this, but a man in blue-green scrubs left the doors that they weren't permitted to go behind and called out Danny's name. "Fenton J Daniel? Is the family of Fenton J Daniel present?" Jack rose to his full seven feet and nodded to the man. The nurse offered the grim giant a tight smile. "If you and your family could please come with me?" Tucker and Sam got up at the same time that Maddie and Jazz did. No one protested as of yet, and all five of them followed the nurse behind the doors.

After a seemingly endless hallway, they found themselves in a room where Danny lay in a bed hooked up to various machines, a man with short black hair standing over the boy with a clipboard in hand and a frown on his face. He looked up and ushered the group in, even though they had already piled into the room. "Ah, Drs. Fenton, I'm not sure what to think here. Your son… his body temperature has dropped to 49 degrees Fahrenheit, and his pulse is currently 38 beats per minute. For all intents and purposes, I'm sorry," he paused, moving back so that Jack and Maddie could get closer to their boy. "But… he should be dead. I'm not sure how he's stable with these results, but I doubt he'll last much longer in this condition." The doctor gave them his best apologetic look, reaching up to place a hand on Jack's shoulder. "You may want to say your goodbyes now, in case he doesn't wake up." Maddie began to shake, and Jazz moved closer to her father as tears began to fall from her eyes.

"Cold as ice…" Jack muttered, having taken his glove off to feel Danny's forehead. There was far too little heat in his body. "He's pale as paper too."

"Danny, baby..." Maddie rested her head on his chest, next to his heart, "Fight it. Don't leave us yet…"

* * *

 

" _ Well then," the man said, waving a hand at the hospital room - and Danny's unconscious body. "It appears we've been gone longer than I thought we had. Time gets wonky like that for me, ya know?" He shrugged, and found the unamused expression on his young passenger's face rather amusing. "Well, I'll let you get back to your family. Remember: good and evil are questions of perspective, go easy on your friends when they fuck up and lemme tell ya this." He leaned in close, the stocky build of the apparent grim reaper expanding to block out the sight of everything else. "Your parents won't hurt you, but they can't know  _ **_everything._ ** _  Revelation has a price - you just happened to have paid a pretty big one in advance and got this lesson." _

_ Danny really wasn't sure he had absorbed all that much information. There were so many things about the rivers and ruined planet to take in that he was worried it would all slip from his memory. "Oh don't worry about that, this is all pretty deep in your subconscious," the reaper assured. "You'll have it all right up there to remember - when the time comes for you to know that you have any memories. For now, though, you should really get back into your body before you fall into a coma." _

_ Before Danny could question how he would be getting back to his body, his vision was overtaken by white and the last of Thanupsin that he heard was, "It's been a damn long time, Achilles… welcome back." _

* * *

 

The doctor had left, and the room was filled with a tense silence as the five of them looked at the unusual patient. No one knew just what to say, for fear of throwing oil on burning bridges instead of water. Just as Sam opened her mouth to apologize for it all, there was a sharp intake of breath. Everyone's eyes widened as Danny began coughing, Jazz rubbing his back as soon as he moved to sit up. When he was able to breathe properly again, his leaden eyelids slowly opened up, a sluggish arm being pulled over his face to block out most of the light. Before he could even slur a question of where he was, the raven haired teen was pulled into a bone crushing embrace, the lights blocked out by traffic cone orange. Another pair of arms, slender like his own, wrapped around him from behind.

It was incredibly tiring to move much at all, so Danny instead relaxed into the hold of his parents with a shaky breath, his eyes growing misty. "I've never been so relieved to have by ribs squeezed to cracking point," he croaked out, unsettled by the quiet, slow beeping of his heart monitor, and his family's uneven breathing. Warm tears fell into his hair and down his cheeks, and Danny felt another weight join in on the group hug.

When the Fentons were able to pull themselves away from Danny to let him breathe, Tucker and Sam pounced on the opportunity and hugged the life out of him themselves. "Wow," he rasped, swallowing a bit to try and moisten his sandy throat. "All it takes to get a goth to hug you is a near death experience." Sam let out a choked laugh and Tucker shook with giggles, and for a moment, they could pretend that everything was perfectly ok.

That was until Jack and Jazz cleared their throats, and Maddie leveled a glare that could inspire a lioness on the trio of teens. "Now that Danny's awake," she began slowly, taking a breath to calm herself a bit. "Daniel James Fenton, what in the name of Tartarus were you thinking?! The laboratory is off-limits because it is dangerous to be in it! I have told you fifty-seven times not to go down there without your father or me, and you brought your friends with you?" Sam and Tucker stood at attention, Sam focusing on the point between Maddie's eyebrows while Tucker kept his eyes on the heart monitor. Danny stiffened and realized that every inch of his body felt as if he had run a marathon in a volcano, on the sun.  "You are never stepping foot in the lab again!  If we can move the portal without disrupting the field, the entirety of the lab itself is going to be moved out of the house so that this has no chance of happening again."

"What?"  Danny's eyes widened almost comically, and his jaw met his bed.  "But all of the things I've helped make in the lab-"

"Danny," Maddie placed her hands on his shoulder's firmly, fearing that any lighter grip would lead to him fading away.  "You nearly died," her voice shook, and the raven haired boy found himself in shock.  His mother was always steady and firm in anything she did, from speaking to cooking to hugging to sparring.  Maddie Fenton did not falter.  "We almost lost you... I almost lost my baby..." Mom didn't falter, and Mom had never cried in front of him before.

"Three weeks," Jack said, his voice booming to the point that Danny idly wondered if neighboring patients would complain. "You will be going three weeks with no cell phone, no Tv, no internet and no comic books. Once you get home, there will be nothing but bed rest and studying, you understand?"

Danny nodded soberly, realizing that he had fucked up majorly. "Yes, sir."

"When we get you home," Maddie muttered when she pulled herself together, "we'll have to run a few tests that they aren't equipped to run here at the hospital.  We don't know what exactly the portal has done to you.  Rest for now, but once you get home, we need to check up on you."

"I'll build a suit," Jack said, the gears turning in his head like the turbines of an engine.  "One that can circumvent the ectoplasmic radiation and convert it into far less harmful electrical energy.  That way, it'll filter out any harmful radiation..."  He wouldn't lose his boy to anything.  Not this portal incident, not to the spear-armed metal people, and not to ectoplasmic radiation.

"Sam, Tucker, I'm telling your parents about this." Both teens let out sounds of disagreement, but Jazz glared and ignored them. "You should be grateful that we aren't pressing charges for manslaughter or something. We don't know what this did to Danny besides burning lightning scars into his skin and causing him agony. This isn't something that's going to just go away because he's awake, and you have to deal with the consequences."

"Who do-" Sam started but was cut off by a less croaky Danny.

"Can I have a glass of water? And a moment with Sam and Tuck before you have them shipped away to their rooms for the rest of eternity?" The scientists sighed and relented, allowing the friends a bit of time to talk. They were relieved to have their Danny still with them after all.

After another long hug, Maddie nodded, and Jazz found the strength to turn herself away from her brother's bed.  "We'll be right outside, and you've got ten minutes of private time.  I don't want you to burn up what little energy you have talking."

"I won't, I promise."  A pat on his head, a kiss on the cheek, and his mom and dad were out the door.  There was only one set of footsteps after that, though, which said that Jazz was getting his water.  "So, looks like we aren't going to the concert." This earned him a snort of amusement from Tucker and an eye roll from Sam. "Oh well, opening a portal to the afterlife is cooler anyways."

"Wait what?" It truly amazed Danny when his contrastive friends managed to speak in perfect unison. Sam managed to find her voice first, and she placed her hands on the bed, leaning forward to make sure she was hearing him right. "Did you just say that portal was to the afterlife?"

The resting teen cracked a grin, reveling in the shock on Sam's face. "What exactly did you think my parents research the most? They're ghost hunters but in a more scientifically interested way. I told you this, right?"

"No," Tucker waved his arms comically in exasperation. "You never told us that your folks were trying to open a doorway to the Land of the Dead! That's so…" he waved his hands around as though he could physically grasp the right words. "So cool! First, they discover gravitons and make the technology to use them, and now they've proven life after death?"

"That's pretty revolutionary, Danny," Sam bumped her knuckles against his arm. "And you're the one who opened it up!"  Danny grinned at her, and she stopped, turning to look at Tucker.  The technogeek met her gaze.  "Actually... Danny, something weird happened right after you came out of the portal."

"Well, yeah, I didn't die."  Danny tried to shrug off the weight of that statement, but it hung in the air like a chunk of led.

Tucker shook his head, a hand on Danny's shoulder.  "No, man.  I think... I think we saw your ghost for a second, and then there was a blinding light, and then you were you again."

"Your suit was reversed in color, and your hair was bleached white," Sam elaborated when Danny looked skeptical.  "Your eyes were green too!  Not like Tuck's eyes, but this toxic glowing kind like they put in the movies for toxic waste."

"Plus you were like, a foot off the ground when you came out of the portal, dude," Tuck added on, further contributing to Danny's eyes widening to the size of the moon.  "When you fell onto your face there was this light halo that turned you back to normal.  Think we might have actually seen your ghost?"

Danny stared at the space between his friends instead of either of them, needing to digest this.  He had been different coming out of the portal?  He didn't feel all that different besides being tired as Tartarus.  He wasn't even all that fatigued if one were to ask.  But then, shouldn't I be?  Danny looked down at his hand and flexed his fingers.  "I feel a little heavier than before but other than that I feel just like I did going into the portal."  Sam opened her mouth to say something but was cut off by Jazz's voice.

"You feel heavier because there are bedsheets on you, lightweight."  She placed the small blue plastic cup in front of his face, bendy straw pointed towards his mouth.  "Don't even think of moving too much.  Just drink, little brother.  You shouldn't have the energy to talk as much as you have been."  Danny couldn't say no to the concern in his sister's voice, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to make her worry more with the information that his friends just gave him, so he decided to just go with it and drink from the straw.

Sam stared at the window and chewed on her lip. Even with Danny trying to keep up a light mood, there was still awkwardness in the air, and she knew at least one source of it. "Danny, I… I'm sorry. For pressuring you into going into the portal, I mean." The boy in question turned his eyes to her but didn't stop in his quest to drain all the water from the cup in one go without breathing. "You warned us that it was dangerous and that we should just go to the concert but I thought that you'd be able to find the problem, and then we'd tell your parents, and they'd congratulate you, not- I didn't expect-"

"Sam," Danny interrupted with something between a sigh and a groan. "I won't pretend I'm not upset that you got me stuck in these itchy hospital sheets and cold gown, but you did get me to complete a project my parents have been working on for like, twenty years." He flashed her a grin. "Don't beat yourself up too much about it. It's in the past, and we can't change that."

"That is a lot fairer than I would have given you credit for, little brother." Jazz ruffled Danny's mess of black hair and shot the goth a nasty look. "And more fair than I'm feeling at the moment."

"That's cause I'm the bigger person here, right Tuck?" the siblings looked over at the geek, who was currently staring at the wall next to the door, hand resting on the EKG machine. His eyes were glassy, and if he didn't know better, Danny would have said his eyes had changed colors a bit. But that was ridiculous because Tucker refused to put in contacts and now was hardly the time to try it. "Tuck?"

"Huh?" the nerd blinked, and the glassy film vanished from his eyes, which flicked over to his best friends and Jazz. "Was that a serious question? Of course, you are Danny, after me of course." He laughed as the others protested, shaking off what he thought he saw. It wasn't possible after all.

After around ten minutes of talking, Danny started yawning, and Sam and Tucker were shooed away by Jazz, much to the youngest Fenton's protesting. Jack and Maddie came in and watched over him as he fell asleep, talking idly about the success of the portal and plans on testing whether or not they could move it.  

" **Well,** " a voice spoke, echoing in the cavern from which it came from. " **That damnable veil has a rather permanent hole punched into it. Now should be a wonderful time to make use of that freak from a few years ago. What was his name… ah yes, Vlad. It's time for a game, mortals. Let's see if any half-breeds can survive."**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel that it makes far more sense for the teenagers who just witnessed a potentially fatal thing happen to their best friend to call his parents and sister right away, since I'm pretty sure he was unconscious when he first came out of the portal. and if he wasn't in canon? Buuulllllllllshiiiiit no fourteen year old has that level of pain tolerance.


	3. A conversation in the hospital

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny meets someone special in his coma dream. Doctors are baffled by Danny's condition. shit happens elsewhere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time on: infinite Hearts!  
> Danny showed Sam and Tuck his parents' lab, which he was not allowed to do cause he's, like, fourteen and shouldn't be allowed in a lab full of volatile experiments without adult supervision. Danny wanted to go to the concert on schedule. Sam wanted to see the other side of a portal. Danny ended up being zapped by the portal, and Tucker must face his fear of hospitals to be there for his bro

_The darkness of unconsciousness did not give him true rest.  He floated in a void, where he could hear nothing.  The silence didn’t last long, howling winds that carried a biting chill that seeped into his bones.  Opening his frost covered eyes, Danny looked out and saw a tall figure dressed in black and white in the distance.  A blink and the figure was a mere two feet away from him.  Black eyes that glittered like frozen tar, near hidden by bangs that hung just above them, the river of ebony locks flowing behind the study man’s back down to where his elbows rested.  Deep violet wings spread out from his back and blocked out the void behind the man, who towered over Danny to the point that the teen needed to look up just to meet his eyes._

_“So,” an oily voice spilled from the man’s lips, echoing in the empty space that Danny assumed to be either the afterlife or his head.  “You are the child that she gave life to, eh?”  The boy opened his mouth - to scream in terror, make a quip, or answer with a question he didn’t know - but found that he couldn’t speak.  Not a sound would come from his own mouth.  “Worry not, boy,” the man tried to reassure him, an icy cold hand resting on his shoulder.  “I will not harm you, and here you are safe, for now.”_

_Looking into the other’s pitch black shirt, he saw faces shifting and moving in the fabric, and could hear muted screams coming from the man’s white jacket.  This did little to inspire trust or safety in him.  “You should count yourself lucky, boy.”  Blue eyes rose up to meet those orbs of void once more.  “Not many are allowed to visit me in this place without being truly and permanently dead.  You, however, have been given a gift from the Spirit Mother.  As such, I do believe I’ll tell you about the world that you opened a path to.”  The man’s left wing folded onto his back and Danny was granted the sight of a sea of green.  “First of all, unlike you humans, I am aware of the Name of my world.  Careful not to tell too many people this name, though, alright?” Not seeing much of a choice, the boy nodded as he was pulled along through the void of emerald energy that arced and swirled like flares of a star._

_“This world, which those who have moved in have begun to call the Ghost Zone, is actually named Geistael.”  Guy-stee-all?  That definitely rolled off the tongue.  “I’m not the one who chose the name, She is.  She being the world herself, of course.”_

* * *

 

Jazz, Jack, Maddie, Tucker and Sam all sat in the uncomfortable chairs in the hospital lobby, waiting to hear about Danny’s condition.  Sam’s heart was heavy with guilt, having been the one who pressured him into entering the machine.   _How could I have been so stupid?_  She berated herself internally.   _Danny didn’t really want to go into the damn machine, he wanted to just show us the lab and go to the concert!  Why did I push him to go in?_  Her face had never been in such a deep scowl as it had been then, even when she tried to get mad at her parents or seem as depressing as possible.

Tucker had his eyes closed and was doing his best to focus not on the hospital around him.  He focused on Danny, and how the younger teen needed his support.  Sure, he never really believed in stuff like that, higher powers or intelligences that decided the goings on of the universe.  But if it helped Danny… if it helped Danny, Tuck would pray to every god under the sun and over it.  Danny had been his friend since they were seven years old and they had spent every moment together, sharing everything that they could.  He wouldn’t allow his best friend - his brother - to go through something like this while he sat at home trying to forget everything just because he was in a place of medicine.

Jazz was split between worry and fury.  How could she allow something like this to happen on her watch?  She should have gone down and made sure they went to the concert not go down to the lab and get Danny hurt!  She had been reading a psychology textbook in her room when all of the electronics flickered and some sort of pressure washed over the room from the ground up, leaving a cold static to tingle her skin.  She hadn’t even a moment to wonder what happened before she heard her brother’s screams.

Jack held a frown as deep as the Marianas trench on his face, hand clasped around his wife’s smaller, shaking one to give support and to get it.  Something inside the machine must have gone wrong, something must have been miswired, something must have delayed the start up.  Something he had done wrong may nearly have cost his son his life.  How does one live with that kind of weight on their soul?

Maddie’s foot wouldn’t stop tapping, nor would the fingers of the hand that wasn’t holding onto Jack for dear life.  Every fiber of her being was telling her to lash out, attack whatever it was that was hurting her baby boy so that he could wake up and be safe and in her arms again.  She wanted to tear into something, wanted to hold her Danny close and never let him go.  She wanted to disassemble the lab and set it ablaze, go back and undo the mistake of creating the portal so that Danny would never have been hurt like this.

Tucker perked up from his slump, back ramrod straight as his eyes opened, flecks of yellow dotting the peridot orbs.  He felt something, some sort of spark that left ghost static rolling over his skin and raised goose bumps under his warm sweater.  “Danny’s ok.”  Before the words left his mouth and drew the attention of everyone gathered, he felt the spark again.  It was almost like a pulse.  A slow, weak pulse but it was there.  “I don’t know how I know but I do.”

Jazz and Maddie opened their mouths, about to tell Tucker off for spouting nonsense at a time like this, but a man in blue-green scrubs left the doors that they weren’t permitted to go behind and called out Danny’s name.  “Fenton J Daniel?  Is the family of Fenton J Daniel present?”  Jack rose to his full seven feet and nodded to the man.  The nurse offered the grim giant a tight smile.  “If you and your family could please come with me?”  Tucker and Sam got up at the same time that Maddie and Jazz did.  No one protested as of yet, and all five of them followed the nurse behind the doors.

After a seemingly endless hallway, they found themselves in a room where Danny lay in a bed hooked up to various machines, a man with short black hair standing over the boy with a clipboard in hand and a frown on his face.  He looked up and ushered the group in, even though they had already piled into the room.  “Ah, Drs. Fenton I’m not sure what to think here.  Your son… his body temperature has dropped to 49 degrees Fahrenheit, and his pulse is currently 38 beats per minute.  For all intents and purposes, I’m sorry,” he paused, moving back so that Jack and Maddie could get closer to their boy.  “But… he should be dead.  I'm not sure how he's stable with these results, but I doubt he'll last much longer in this condition.”  The doctor gave them his best apologetic look, reaching up to place a hand on Jack's shoulder.  "You may want to say your goodbyes now, in case he doesn't wake up."  Maddie began to shake and Jazz moved closer to her father as tears began to fall from her eyes.

“Cold as ice…” Jack muttered, having taken his glove off to feel Danny’s forehead.  There was far too little heat in his body.  “He’s pale as paper too.”

"Danny, baby..." Maddie let out a sob and rested her head on his chest.  "Please come back to me..."

* * *

_“Well then,” the man said, waving a hand at the hospital room - and Danny’s unconscious body.  “It appears we've been gone longer than I thought we had.  Time gets wonky like that for me, ya know?"  He shrugged, and found the unamused expression on his young passenger's face rather amusing.  "Well, I'll let you get back to your family.  Remember: good and evil are questions of perspective, go easy on your friends when they fuck up, and lemme tell ya this."  He leaned in close, the stocky build of the apparent grim reaper expanding to block out the sight of everything else.  "Your parents won't hurt you, but they can't know **everything** just cause you've been given a revelation.  Everything has a price - you just happened to have paid a pretty big one in advanced and got this lesson."_

_Danny really wasn't sure he had absorbed all that much information.  there were so many things about the rivers and ruined planet to take in that he was worried it would all slip from his memory.  "Oh don't worry about that, this is all pretty deep in your subconscious," the reaper assured.  "You'll have it all right up there to remember - when the time comes for you to know that you have any memories.  For now though, you should really get back into your body before you fall into a coma."_

_Before Danny could question how he would be getting back to his body_ _, his vision was overtaken by white and the last of Thanupsin that he heard was, “It’s been a damn long time, Achilles… welcome back.”_

* * *

 The doctor had left and the room was filled with a tense silence as the five of them looked at the unusual patient.  No one knew just what to say, for fear of throwing oil on burning bridges instead of water.  Just as Sam opened her mouth to apologize for it all, there was a sharp intake of breath.  Everyone’s eyes widened as Danny began coughing, Jazz rubbing his back as soon as he moved to sit up.  When he was able to breathe properly again, his leaden eyelids slowly opened up, a sluggish arm being pulled over his face to block out most of the light.  Before he could even get out a question of where he was, the raven haired teen was pulled into a bone crushing embrace, the lights blocked out by traffic cone orange.  Another pair of arms, more slender like his own, wrapped around him from behind.

It was incredibly tiring to move much at all, so Danny instead relaxed into the hold of his parents with a shaky breath, his eyes growing misty.  “I’ve never been so relieved to have by ribs squeezed to cracking point,” he croaked out, unsettled by the quiet slow beeping of his heart monitor, and his family’s uneven breathing.  Warm tears fell into his hair and down his cheeks and Danny felt another weight join in on the group hug.

When the Fentons were able to pull themselves away from Danny to let him breathe, Tucker and Sam pounced on the opportunity and hugged the life out of him themselves.  “Wow,” he rasped, swallowing a bit to try and moisten his sandy throat.  “All it takes to get a goth to hug you is a near death experience.”  Sam let out a choked laugh and Tucker shook with giggles, and for a moment, they could pretend that everything was perfectly ok.

That was until Jack and Jazz cleared their throats and Maddie leveled a glare that could inspire a lioness on the trio of teens.  “Now that Danny’s awake,” she began slowly, taking a breath to calm herself a bit.  “Daniel James Fenton, what in the name of Tartarus were you thinking?!  The laboratory is _off-limits_ because it is dangerous to be in it!  I have told you fifty-seven times not to go down there without me or your father, and you brought your friends with you?”  Sam and Tucker stood at attention, Sam focusing on the point between Maddie’s eyebrows while Tucker kept his eyes on the heart monitor.  Danny stiffened and realized that every inch of his body felt as if he had run a marathon in a volcano, on the sun.

“Three weeks,” Jack said, his voice kept down as much as he could manage so as to not disturb anyone in any of the other rooms.  “You will be going three weeks with no cell phone, no Tv, no internet and no comic books.  Once you get home, there will be nothing but bed rest and studying, you understand?”

Danny nodded soberly, knowing that he had fucked up majorly.  “Yes, sir.”

“When we get home we’ll have to run a few tests that they aren’t equipped to run here at the hospital,” Maddie muttered, trying to form a hypothesis on what changes her son had undergone.  “We don’t know what exactly the portal has done to you.  Rest for now, but once you get home we need to check up on you.”

“Sam, Tucker, I’m telling your parents about this.”  Both teens let out sounds of disagreement but Jazz glared at them and ignored them.  “You should be grateful that we aren’t pressing charges for manslaughter or something.  We don’t know what this did to Danny besides burning lightning scars into his skin and causing him agony.  This isn’t something that’s going to just go away because he’s awake, and you have to deal with the consequences.”

“Who do-” Sam started but was cut off by a less croaky Danny.

“Can I have a glass of water?  And a moment with Sam and Tuck before you have them shipped away to the confines of their rooms for the rest of eternity?”  The scientists sighed and relented, allowing the friends a bit of time to talk.  They were relieved to have their Danny still with them after all.

“Fine,” Maddie stated, pressing a kiss to Danny’s forehead before heading to the door.  “I’ll head back home and start analysis on the portal.  Don’t do anything to exert yourself, sweetie.”

“I won’t, I promise.”  With that, Maddie left, Jazz following after to go get Danny some water and Jack to find the cafeteria.  The food likely tasted like cardboard but it was food.  Danny looked between his friends, who had fallen back into their natural slouches as soon as Maddie was out of the room, and cleared his throat.  “So, looks like we aren’t going to the concert.”  This earned him a snort of amusement from Tucker and an eye roll from Sam.  “Oh well, opening a portal to the afterlife is cooler anyways.”

“Wait what?”  It truly amazed Danny when his contrastive friends managed to speak in perfect unison.  Sam managed to find her voice first and she placed her hands on the bed, leaning forward to make sure she was hearing him right.  “Did you just say that portal was to the afterlife?”

The resting teen cracked a grin, reveling in the shock on Sam’s face.  “What exactly did you think my parents research the most?  They’re ghost hunters but in a more scientifically interested way.  I told you this, right?”

“No,” Tucker waved his arms comically in exasperation.  “You never told us that your folks were trying to open a doorway to the Land of the Dead!  That’s so…”  he waved his hands around as though he could physically grasp the right words.  “So cool!  First, they discover gravitons _and_ make the technology to use them, and now they’ve proven life after death?”

“That’s pretty revolutionary, Danny,” Sam bumped her knuckles against his arm.  “And you’re the one who opened it up!”

“True,” Jazz called out as she walked back in, a plastic cup full of water and a blue bendy straw in hand.  “But he’s still grounded from taking credit along with everything else.”  She held out the cup and he slowly raised a hand to grasp it.  “Put your hand down, Danny.  You shouldn’t really have the strength to talk so much, let alone move so take it easy before you pass out, ok?”  Unable to really say no to the concern in her voice, he sighed and let his hand fall to his side.

While Danny drank through the straw Sam stared at the window and chewed on her lip.  Even with Danny trying to keep up a light mood, there was still awkwardness in the air, and she knew at least one source of it.  “Danny, I… I’m sorry.  For pressuring you into going into the portal, I mean.”  The boy in question turned his eyes to her but didn’t stop in his quest to drain all the water from the cup in one go without breathing.  “You warned us that it was dangerous and that we should just go to the concert but I thought that you’d be able to find the problem and then we’d tell your parents and they’d congratulate you, not- I didn’t expect - “

“Sam,” Danny interrupted with something between a sigh and a groan.  “I won’t pretend I’m not upset that you got me stuck in these itchy hospital sheets and cold gown, but you _did_ get me to complete a project my parents have been working on for like, twenty years.”  He flashed her a grin.  “Don’t beat yourself up too much about it.  It’s in the past, and we can’t change that.”

“That is a lot fairer than I would have given you credit for, little brother.”  Jazz ruffled Danny’s mess of black hair and shot the goth a nasty look.  “And more fair than I’m feeling at the moment.”

“That’s cause I’m the bigger person here, right Tuck?”  the siblings looked over at the geek, who was currently staring at the wall next to the door, hand resting on the EKG machine.  His eyes were glassy and if he didn’t know better, Danny would have said his eyes had changed colors a bit.  But that was ridiculous because Tucker refused to put in contacts and now was hardly the time to try it.  “Tuck?”

“Huh?”  the nerd blinked, and the glassy film vanished from his eyes, which flicked over to his best friends and Jazz.  “Was that a serious question?  Of course, you are Danny, after me of course.”  He laughed as the others protested, shaking off what he thought he saw.  It wasn’t possible after all.

After around ten minutes of talking, Danny started yawning and Sam and Tucker were shooed away by Jazz, much to the youngest Fenton’s protesting.  Even as he moaned and groaned, he felt sleep claiming him once again, and began to nod off.

* * *

 

“ **Well,** ” a voice spoke, echoing in the cavern from which it came from.  “ **It seems that everything is going well.  That damnable veil has a rather permanent hole punched into it.  Now should be a wonderful time to make use of that freak from a few years ago. What was his name… ah yes, Vlad.  It’s time for a game, mortals.  Let’s see if any half-breeds can survive.”**  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate the thought of Vlad ending up all alone like that when all he truly wanted was love. So, I say that he was being influenced by something. Whether possession or powerful hypnotic suggestion, I'll have Vlad's mind warped by an outside force damnit! also, I made sure that Death is less.... stereotypical. after all, a guy eating evil souls that suffer in his stomach for all eternity has to have put on some bulk, no?


	4. Dreams Lead to Discovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> well, his ghostliness had to start presenting itself at some point soon after the portal incident right?

Danny found himself dreaming that he was flying through the endless expanse of sky.  The view was beautiful - violet earth covered in bright blue grass and flowers of every color.  Buildings of every shape and size could be seen in the distance, though the true eye catcher was the castle.  It was gothic in a traditional sense, towering spires that climbed to the heavens, massive, ornate doors that gleamed in the setting sunlight,  flying buttresses and endless balconies with pointed arches.  The castle carved from violet stone that looked beautiful against the emerald sky as the gleaming moon rose behind the structure.  Closer to him, children were running and flying around in games of tag and ball, while adults began to call them in.  

Danny turned towards the forest only a few miles away and soared in that direction, swooping down low so that he could weave between the trees and get the drop on some monkeys or spook some squirrels.  Birds with wings the size of his arm flew next to him as he went, dark feathers gleaming as though slicked with oil.

The teen began to rise, letting out a laugh of joy.  The world around him was beautiful and rich, and it felt so alive!  But then his ascent slowed, and something tugged at his arms and chest.  Red vines coiled around his limbs and torso as Danny fought against the hold, dragging him back toward the earth.  “No!” he cried out, pulling as hard as he could.  “Let me go, you overgrown weeds!”  He suddenly felt cold, freezing cold.  It was as though the warmth was sucked out of him by the very air itself and his eyes widened in horror as the vines chilled not into ice, but metal.  “No, no!”

The world became not but darkness and he fell, fell from the heavens, dropped from the world, fell through the vanishing earth into the abyss, which began to light up with a searing light that burned away his form in layers until only his soul remained and-

  
  


He saw only darkness, thick and suffocating, weighing down his limbs and no matter how much he thrashed there was only darkness and constraint and an irritating beeping next to him.  Then a dimmed light flickered into existence over his head, and the sheet was removed, allowing him to breathe properly.  There was someone in blue clothing, saying something that he couldn’t make out past the thudding beat of his heart in his eardrums.  After a few moments of breathing, Danny tried to focus on the man.  “Are you ok, Danny?”  the boy let took another shaky breath before nodding.

“Y-yeah, I’m good.  Just a dream gone bad, I guess.”  He let out a yawn and stretched his arms, not wanting to fall back asleep too soon.  “What time is it?”

“About five A.M.”  The nurse answered, checking over the boy’s chart and raising a brow as Danny swung his legs over the edge of the bed.  “Whoa there, tiger.  Where do ya think you’re goin?”

“Just wanted to stretch my legs,” He glanced at the nurse’s name tag, “Jacob.  That’s not a problem, I hope.”  For once, he wasn't sarcastic.  Though some strange calm had settled over him, Danny was still scared about how his health had been affected by all of this.

Jacob, who had a wild looking beard and kind green eyes, stared at him for a moment.  “If you can stand up and walk forward ten steps then I’ll allow it.”  Danny’s own eyes narrowed at the challenge, and Jacob’s lips turned up in a grin.  Challenges could bring out the best or worst of a person’s condition after all.  “And no cheating by taking super short steps either.”  Either way, he didn’t expect Danny to be able to get more than three steps before needing some help.

The teen huffed and gently applied weight to each foot.  Once he was sure that he could stand properly, he rose to his full height, though that wasn’t much, yet.  With little more than a slight wobble from laying down for so long, he took a step forward and continued until he felt the tug of what he saw as no more than a giant stethoscope taped to his chest.  Turning to Jacob, he gestured vaguely in the direction of the monitors.  “Um, I don’t think I can go any further with this pulling on me, and I promise to keep a thermometer in my mouth if you unhook me.”

Jacob’s eyebrows had climbed towards his hairline with how quickly the kid managed to move.  “I’m really not supposed to do this,” he began.  But then the kid pulled out the puppy dog eyes.  They were big, and his lip was in a pout, and he even slumped like a kid told that Santa wasn’t real.  “You’re good, kid.  I’ll give ya that.”  Danny kept up his pouting until he was unhooked, then flashing a satisfied grin.  “You get an hour to stretch your legs, then it’s back to bed, got it?”

Danny nodded and raised his right hand.  “Scouts honor sir!”  The nurse gave a skeptical quirk of his brow.  “I was  _ so  _ a scout, I just quit, ya know?”  Danny shrugged and made his way out to roam the halls.

After wandering past the cafeteria, the waiting room, and finding a better window than his own to look at the city from, Danny found the hospital to be agonizingly dull.  Which is why he found himself looking for a screwdriver to dismantle the equipment monitoring his heart before he went back to the room.  Thankfully for his family’s “rainy day” savings, Danny couldn’t find one.  And Jacob may have found him trying to sneak into a maintenance closet.  “Your hour is up, kid.”

Danny turned to look at the chubby cheeked nurse with a guilty smile.  “Is it?  I’ve never been good at telling time.”

Nurse Jacob laughed and put a hand on Danny’s shoulder, gently steering him back towards the room.  “Sure you aren’t.  Mind tellin me what you planned to do in the maintenance closet?”

“Grab a screwdriver and take apart my heart monitor to make a small model rocket,” the teen admitted with a grin, opening the door himself when they got to the room.  “It’s so boring here.”

“Most teenagers,” Jacob said with an eye roll, handing over a remote, “watch TV when bored.  I promise, a day in here and you’ll be hooked on novellas.”  He chuckled at the teal-eyed pout of the teen being put back to bed.   _ Odd… coulda swore his eyes were blue _ .

“I don’t speak Spanish,” Danny countered with a snort, kicking the itchy material of the hospital blanket down to the foot of the bed.  “So no thank you.  Do you get the sci-fi channel here?”

“Wouldn’t know…” Jacob shrugged, setting everything back up and turning on Danny’s heart monitor.  “I can fool the system once, but that’s it,” he warned.  “From here on you’ll have to suffer resting up and getting better.”  Danny covered his eyes with his arm and gave a classic woe-is-me groan, though a grin found its way to his boyish face.  “Feel better, tiger.”

Once Jacob was out of the room, Danny turned on the tv and flicked through channels until he found the sci-fi channel.  He then got up and looked out of the window.  The sun was already almost entirely above the horizon and painted the sky in golds and pinks.  “Just another day or so and I can go home.  The hospital food sucks.”

* * *

 

“I’m not sure what he did, Mads,” Jack called in his half shout of a voice over his shoulder, “But Danny somehow got the portal to actually work!  It’s stable, and I’m recording no ectoplasmic flares like with the protoportal.”  He stepped back from the control panel next to the portal and walked over to the computer Maddie was situated at, combing through the data that she was getting from the chemical sensors inside the portal.  He placed a hand on her shoulder, beaming with a radiance that matched the light of the swirling vortex of ectoplasm, causing her to stop and look up at him with a bright smile of her own.  “Maddie, we did it!  After twenty years, we finally opened a portal to the Ghost Zone!”

“After all the misses in the past few years, I’m a mite skeptical,” she admitted, glad to see that Jack’s enthusiastic grin never left his face.  “But if it’s not Aztec America world again, we’ll need to thank Danny right after his grounding.”

“Once we confirm that something can enter the portal and come back out, we’ll schedule a press conference and show the world!”  Jack ran over to a file cabinet, opened the bottom drawer, and pulled out a yo-yo with a cartoonish ghost on the sides.  It was a specially made yo-yo, just for Jack, with six feet of string thick enough to withstand the force of his flicks and disks big enough to fit properly in his palm.  “And we can determine if something can cross the gateway safely pretty quickly.”

Jack walked up to the portal and with an expert flick of his wrist, he sent the yo-yo through the portal.  After ten seconds, he pulled it back and was satisfied to catch the yo-yo, fully intact.  “Passage through portal confirmed possible for inorganic matter, probe to be used at a later date.”

Maddie took down notes with a nod and stretched with a yawn.  “A check of the time says that it’s 6 AM, Jack.  We should go see Danny, make sure he’s ok.”  She stood and took off her gloves.  “And suitably bored to death as early punishment.”

“As long as they don’t give him any tools,” Jack snorted, “He’s sure to be plenty bored with being in bed.”  He stripped off his jumpsuit and zipped up a new one, having been the one most exposed to the radiation of the portal while Maddie was doing the same simply out of habit.  They had established their own personal protocol for whenever they worked with the chemicals in the lab; change out into something else before leaving it.  For Jack, that was usually just another jumpsuit, he had twenty of the same one, but for Maddie, it was something more practical.  A yellow short sleeved top and denim jeans, along with her favorite black shoes.  Sure, around the house Maddie wore her jumpsuit as much as Jack for mere convenience, but she liked to dip a little into fashion now and then when they went out.

She grabbed the keys and headed to the car, slowing only when Jack spoke in that tone that said he had a bad feeling about what was going on.  “Mads… Danny shouldn’t have been able to sit up and talk with his friends for that long so quickly.  Do ya think maybe… maybe the extreme amount of ectoplasmic radiation did something to his body to accelerate the regenerative function of his cells?”

Maddie tilted her head and shrugged as she got into the driver’s seat of their SUV.  “I suppose it’s possible, and certainly favorable to degeneration from the exposure.  I’m just glad he’s alive… maybe we should bring him some of his astronomy books?”  fierce as she could be, Maddie Fenton would always have a soft spot for her babies.  And they would always be just that in her eyes till her dying day.

Jack let out a sigh and nodded, getting back up and heading to the door that connected the kitchen with the garage.  “I’ll be right back Mads, don’t worry.”  It was a few moments before Jack came back to the waiting truck and slipped into it with a small bag full of books.  “Got em, these’ll keep him from being too bored.”

Maddie grinned, and they spent the drive tossing ideas back and forth about what they could do now that they had a source of ectoplasm that wouldn’t go dry.  The first thing that came to mind was that the portal kept itself on even after they had unplugged it.  They had already developed batteries with what little they had managed to collect from the protoportal before it closed itself off.  “A little tweak here and there and we could write up a manual and be the ones who spread free and limitless energy to the world!”

“True, though we’d need some financial support, such as the Mansons or maybe….”  Maddie turned to her husband and could see that he was following her train of thought, not liking where it's next stop was.  “You don’t know that he won’t help.”

“I do know that he won’t want to help with any of this at all,” Jack shook his head, firmly against the idea.  “He hates ghosts with a passion, buys into that ridiculous crap he’s been told since he was a kid that all spirits are evil and should be wiped out.  He won’t want to help us if we tell him that we’ve opened up a portal to their world.  Heck, he might disown me instead of funding us.”

“Your father isn’t  _ that  _ bad, Jack.”  Maddie frowned, looking at him fully as she pulled up to a stop sign.  “He’s your father after all.  At most, he’ll be mad and ask us if we have any plans of self-defense, which we do.”  Jack’s frown persisted, and Maddie let out a sigh.  She loved Jack, and his stubborn determination to see whatever he put his mind to through was one of the reasons for that, but that same stubbornness could get in the way of him seeing things in a better light.  “At least consider it?”

After a moment, once the car started moving again, Jack heaved a sigh and pressed a kiss to his wife’s cheek.  “Fine, I’ll think about it.  Later.  Right now I’m thinkin more about Danny.”

* * *

 

When his mom and dad got there, Danny was completely bored out of his mind.  “Oh thank goodness you guys are here!”  He shot up in his bed with his arms held over his head in exasperation.  “The sci-fi channel decided to pick today of all days to not show anything sci-fi.  I’ve been looking at Harry Potter reruns all day, and I think my brain is melting from the lack of lasers and space ships.”

“Glad we’re at least not boring to you,” Maddie chuckled, ruffling his hair before sitting on the bed, letting Jack take the chair beside her.  “So, sweety… how are you feeling?”  She cupped his cheek and looked him over for any signs of radiation poisoning.  The lightning bolt scars still littered his face like plastic bags did the streets, but otherwise, she couldn’t see anything wrong.

Practically feeling his mother’s worry, Danny sighed and shrugged.  “I feel fine, Mom.  Bored out of my mind, hungrier than I remember ever being, but fine.  I hardly even feel tired after a little sleep.”  He frowned and sat back against the slightly elevated bed.  “I should be tired, though, shouldn’t I?  Heck, I  _ should  _ be comatose at best.”  Before he could continue down that angst filled avenue of thought, a book fell into his lap, courtesy of his father.

Seeing Danny’s darkening eyes light up the way they did promised that Jack would have smile lines when he hit his fifties.  “I had a feeling that you’d be bored out of your star filled mind without something space related, so I grabbed some books from your room.  Only the non-fiction, though.”  Danny huffed a sigh, smile sticking to his lips.  “Can’t have you too entertained during your grounding.”

“You can have your comics back when your grounding period is over, young man.”  Maddie went for a stern voice, but she couldn’t maintain it.  She was too worried to think about punishing her baby boy.  “And we’ll figure this out together sweety.  Don’t worry about the shoulds, coulds and woulds.  You’re alive and ok, and that’s what matters.”  She leaned forward to give her baby boy a hug and gasped when she felt her arms pass through vapor.

The heart monitor went wild before cutting off into a dead singular beep as Danny stared down at himself.  His body was translucent, and he could feel himself hovering over the bed, the sheet and his hospital gown having  _ fallen through him _ along with his monitoring equipment.  He shrieked out of shock, and his body snapped back to solidity.  He was still floating and found himself pressed against the ceiling.  This inspired more screaming.

“Danny!”  Jack’s hand snapped up as soon as his son was opaque and grabbed onto his foot, trying to pull him down without breaking any bones.  Instead, he found himself lifted up with the teenager, as though he didn’t weigh a thing at all.  Letting go he fell to his feet and did the next logical thing: he held his arms out over the bed.  “Danny, whatever it is that you’re doing there I need you to stop!”

“Calm down, Danny!”  Maddie was trying to take her own advice while also attempting to soothe her panicking son.  “We’re right here, you’ll be ok.  Just calm down.”  He happened to have run out of the air to scream with just then - always did have the lungs of a singer - and took several deep breaths.  He pushed on the ceiling and turned to look at them, eyes wide and near glowing with fright.  “Your father will catch you, and we’re going to be fine, ok?  Breathe.”

Danny, amidst his panic, somehow focused on his parents.  They wouldn’t let him get hurt as long as they were there. He’d be okay. Letting these thoughts repeat in his mind, the teen slowly calmed down.  And then Gravity took notice of him, got upset with his odd behavior and took hold once more, pulling him toward the bed.  As promised, he landed instead in his father’s arms, hyperventilating and shaking with alarm. “W-w-what just happened?”

Maddie rushed to check on her baby boy in Jack’s arms, confused when her large husband gently but swiftly placed Danny under the covers of the hospital bed and grabbed the TV remote. “Jack what are-” he clicked through channels rapidly until he landed on a horror movie, thumb hovering over the power button. The door opened, and he hit it.

“Sorry about that,” Jack said to Jacob, who looked to be caught between fearful of his patient’s safety, and irritated relief when he saw the remote.  “The flick had a scarier scene than the B-listers we’re used to at home.”

Danny and Maddie nodded, and Jacob sighed.  “Please try not to give the patients in other rooms heart attacks, kid, you’ve got the lungs of an underwater singer on you.”  The man left the room to calm the other patients, and for a moment, the Fentons were all still and silent.  

Then Jack pulled back the covers, and he and Maddie quickly looked their son over for any irregularities besides his scars.  With a meticulousness only scientists and architects possessed, they looked him over, had him flip, and checked again.  Most teens would be embarrassed, but most teens weren’t A) terrified out of their mind that whatever happened would happen again or B) raised by top scientists who he knew would find any irregularities about him.  When he got the all clear, he flipped over again and started pulling on his hospital gown so that the doctor wouldn’t question anything.

“There are no physical indications of whatever just happened,” Maddie muttered, pulling her baby boy into a hug once more - slowly and carefully as if hugging him would cause the laws of physics to stop applying to him once more, and she would never be able to embrace her son again.  “And it seems to have passed.”

“So I just suddenly lost tangibility and weight for a minute?”  Danny asked as soon as the embrace ended.  “I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s not supposed to happen in the land of we physical law abiding folk.”

“And if you don’t have to abide by the laws of physics anymore?”  His wife and son looked towards him in shock, but Jack could see Mads doing the numbers in her head like he was doing now.  “We don’t know everything about how ectoplasm works just yet after all.  The portal chamber was flooded with electrified ectoplasm, not just electrical energy.”

“And all of that energy passed through me as its material conduit,” Danny nodded, picking up on what his father was speculating.  “If there was more than just ectoplasmic energy involved when I was hit-”

“Then whatever effect it had on you, it could have altered your physiology.”  Maddie’s eyes widened, and she wished she had her goggles with her to check what readings she could get off of Danny’s body.  “Jack, scan him with your goggles and see what ectoplasmic readings you find.”

“Wouldn’t radiation poisoning be hurting him?”  The three jumped when they heard the voice, but calmed and lightly glared at Jazz when she closed the door behind her.  “That’s the only reason I could think of for Danny giving off any ectoplasmic readings.  Ectoplasmic contamination?”

“Yes, but the only other case we know of was our old college buddy Vlad.”  Jack’s voice was wistful when he spoke of his best friend, reminiscing old times together.  He pulled his hood and goggles over his head before he was talking again.  “And it had given him what was later coined ‘ectoacne.'  Thank goodness Danny didn’t get that.  He might be in here for weeks instead of a couple days.”

“What happened to Vlad?”  Danny’s brow creased.  He wasn’t sure what all was going on, but he did want to know and know what to expect.  “He isn’t… dead, is he?  From this ghost disease?”  Danny spotted his sister’s eye roll, and it lifted his spirits just a bit.  Jazz denying the existence of ghosts was normal, familiar.

“No, no.” Maddie was quick to reassure them as she went over notes in her head and pulled a notepad and pencil out of her purse.  “Vlad is alive, if not bitter.  They wouldn’t let us in to see him at the hospital and then he got transferred to a different location and though we know he’s alive he hasn’t contacted us once ever since.”  She jotted down her observations and theories before pausing to look at Danny.  “How do you feel sweety?”

“I’m fine now,” he shrugged, knowing what his mom meant by that question.  “It felt like every bit of me had turned as cold as the depths of space.”

“Careful, Romeo,” Jazz playfully jibed, ruffling his hair.  “Sam’s expanding your vocabulary rapidly.”

“And the cold feeling grew when I started floating.”  He saw Jazz’s eyes widen like saucers and nodded.  “Oh yeah, I became intangible and weightless for a minute, scaring the bejeebus outta me and mom and dad.”

Speaking of Jack, he had gotten his readings and pulled out a tablet he preferred to use for notes over Maddie’s traditional pen and paper method.  "Danny, your body, is lit up dimly with ectoplasmic contamination, but it isn't making you notably sick.  Maybe... maybe you're becoming ghostly?"

They all quieted as they thought about that.  "Well," Maddie started, looking over Danny's scars again, "We did theorize that ghosts aren't necessarily the spirits of the dead, but their own form of being residing in a dimension where the standard rules for identifying a living being differ from how it works in this dimension."

"I can't believe I'm eager to take a test," Danny muttered, trying to make himself feel better with a bit of humor.  "But when we get home, can we start with at least one before bed?  If I'm mutating into a better mascot for Casper High before I even reach high school, I wanna know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, no Fenton is an idiot in my stories. I refuse to allow it. Ever. just, really fuckin goofy. Questions, comments, thoughts about the world?


	5. Voluntary Accidents in Volatile Situations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny wants to know if he can do that phasing thing on purpose, Clockwork is playing the ultimate cosmic board game, and secrets are hard to keep when you're in a hospital.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By my own terms, this is short, but it gets the point across. I might do what I'm doing with The Summoning at some point and go back to redo the chapters, but for now please enjoy.
> 
> scratch that; i already went back to improve upon the chapter. by adding more content for a more satisfying (to me) wrap up.

Jazz opted to stay with Danny since she had gotten sleep and their parents had not. Now she was watching Danny alternate between looking at the TV, his book on navigating the sea with the stars, and his hand. The worrying part of this was when he stared at his hand for an entire minute before going back to looking at the TV. After the seventh cycling of actions, Jazz found that she couldn't take it anymore and she let out a sigh. "If you want to stare at your hand then please don't waste electricity with the TV." She knew her brother, and a playful barb usually got his attention.

His eyes - which they all had noticed had turned aquamarine instead of their natural sapphire - snapped to her and his lips stretched from a thinning line into a sheepish smile. "Sorry," he apologized as he scratched the back of his head. "I was just thinking about what happened earlier. I mean, I turned intangible!" He gestured wildly and nearly knocked over his heart monitor. Reigning in on how far his arm stretched, he pointed at his body. "I went right through mom and then I started floating up like a balloon. If I can do that by accident then maybe I can do it on purpose too!" He grinned at the thought and returned to staring at his hand, a look of concentration on his face.

"Shouldn't you wait until we're in a controlled environment before trying to do something like that again?" Jazz's tone carried her worry clearly, she knew, and her eyes flicked to the door. "Somewhere private where no one can walk in on you?"

"Please, Spazz," Danny rolled his eyes and grinned when he saw the scowl on his sister's face. "We memorized the Doc's pattern, and he's not due back for another twenty minutes, right?"

"Yeah, but-"

"So," he interrupted, staring at his hand once more, "I have plenty of time to try it out without worrying about someone walking in and seeing. Now shoosh your pie hole, I'm tryna concentrate." Jazz glared for a moment before leaning back and splitting her attention between her brother and the door to his hospital room.

Danny closed his eyes and remembered what it felt like. The thrill of cold like space outside of the atmosphere, air floating above and beyond the silly thing restricted by gravity and forced to stay on the ground. There was another feeling, though, one like static that had rolled over him just as he went to hug his mom. He concentrated on that and felt it again. He grasped it with his mind and imagined his hand becoming see through. Danny's hand tingled, and he opened his eyes with a gasp, pushing his now translucent extremity through the headboard of his bed.

"Holy Orion, IT WORKED!" He yanked his hand back and held it up for Jazz to see, beaming brightly as the sun when he saw the look on her face. "I can do it on purpose! This is amazing! And what else can ghosts do?" He thought for a moment then concentrated and closed his eyes. _Darkness, the absence of light, nothingness, empty space._ He imagined himself slowly vanishing from existence, opening his eyes when he heard a clattering sound. Jazz had shot to her feet, looking at where he was in alarm. Looking down he saw - or rather didn't see - why. "I'm invisible. Jazz, I'm invisible! This is incredible!" The tingling passed as his body became opaque again, where Jazz could properly see him. Before he could try again, a sudden fatigue washed over him like a wave in the ocean.

Jazz walked over and checked to make sure all of Danny had returned to visibility before letting out a sigh. "You may have overdone it a bit, little brother. All the energy you need to do this stuff likely just got used up from doing it on purpose."

"Mhm," Danny half agreed half yawned. "Tuck n Sam are gonna freak when I show em what I can do." Was this as tired as he was supposed to be? He could barely keep his eyes open. When he did, he saw a disapproving frown on Jazz's face and snorted. "Stop bein overprotective. They aren't gonna _freak out_ freak out, just get all surprised n shit. N I'm gonna show em, cause it happened to me, not you." As his eyes slipped closed once more and the warm darkness of unconsciousness coiled around him, Danny felt a smile slip into place on his face. "I trust them."

* * *

Clockwork sighed as they returned to the Citadel of Time. It had felt, even to them, like an eternal meeting. Other timekeepers were difficult to negotiate with, especially ones as overly trusting in Destiny as Himerish. Finally, however, they were able to convince the others to leave the ruptured veil around Geistaeal as it was. "Destiny may have forced us here, but Fate gives us a chance for a far better future than that ridiculous Himerish wants to believe." A wave of the Chronostaff toward the mirrors in their observation room and Clockwork was shown the thousands of paths down which influential powers were leading their world. "I'll play your little game, Kiruc. I assure you, you won't win this time." Their focus fell upon a disastrous clash between The Guardians of Kandrakar and the soon to rise Court of Geistaeal. Ether and Nether clashing with each other and causing destruction on an unthinkable scale. Tsunamis, Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Infernos; elemental chaos on the largest possible scale. "I shall not allow you to destroy another world. Nor shall you turn one of our own against us for long." An image of a man with long, stark white hair, dark blue eyes, and frown lines appeared on their screen. "After all, sometimes all that's needed for a proper reunion is the right push."

An infantile finger tapped the forehead of the man in the mirror, and the image rippled. Scenes flashed by faster than the eyes of most could see. " _All is as it should be._ "

* * *

When Danny opened his eyes, he saw his friends competing with each other on their handhelds. The sound of lightning striking came from Tucker's side - he had claimed Danny's right side as his the second Sam locked eyes with Danny, to the infinite amusement of the goth and space nerd. The geek whooped as quietly as he could, though that wasn't very quiet, and Sam growled at him. "You only won because you spammed the lightning strike."

"No, I won because I know how to chain my power attacks together without losing too much mana." He chided, smug smirk to go along with his superior tone. "You just attack until you run out of power and then try to melee your way through it."

"Yeah," Danny muttered as he stretched, surprising them both out of their chairs. "But you gotta balance your mana managing with some defense, Tuck. You suck at that." He kept his arms outstretched to receive his hugs, which he got immediately. "Careful, I need those ribs."

"Dude, how ya feelin?" Tucker settled on the bed next to Danny, regardless of how small said bed was. "You've been out for a while, and your pulse hasn't risen at all."

"Neither has your temperature, which is kind of alarming since usually, only corpses are that cold." Sam sat back in her chair, scooted up to the bed. The scene reminded Danny of his parents only a few hours ago.

"You would know, huh?" The eco-goth rapped her knuckles against his arm, and Danny rubbed it in feigned pain. "Ack, she even attacks the injured!"

"Oh stow it, ya big baby. You have your space books with you, so you're all right." Sam rolled her eyes before grinning down at her friend. "Jazz said you have something to tell us."

"What is it, man? She wouldn't give us any hints." Danny snickered at the pout on his best friend's face, emerald eyes wide with anticipation. "It's not funny; you know how much I hate waiting."

Danny sat up properly, one arm around Tucker's shoulders for support, and held up his left hand. "Ya know how that portal links this world to the afterlife? Mom and Dad have been calling that afterlife dimension the Ghost Zone for the longest time, it's where ghosts and ectoplasm are, yeah? Well, look at this." _Frozen space, cold static, fading away_. Danny's eyes blazed a toxic, radioactive green and his hand turned translucent. He pushed it through the bed before concentrating harder. _Darkness, nothingness, empty space_. Lifting his arm up, he showed that it was gone. "Tada! I even levitated yesterday too! Though, just doing what I just did is already making me feel tired, so I'll save that for when I get outta here." Danny let his hand return to normality and looked over at each of his friends, grinning ear to ear.

Both of their faces were painted in shock, though Tucker's held an open-mouthed smile. "Dude!" He broke the silence and shook his best bro's shoulders in excitement. "That's amazing! You have, like, superpowers from another dimension!"

"First you have an interdimensional portal in your basement, then you prove life after death, and now you have super powers?" Sam let out an incredulous laugh and ruffled Danny's hair, further messing up the black rat's nest. "You continue to climb up to 'one of a kind' Danny."

"That," a voice called from the doorway, causing all three teens to freeze, "would explain your temperature and pulse. If you got flooded with power from the netherworld, it would make sense that your life signs are lowered." Slowly, as though taking their time to acknowledge the voice would change it to that of someone they knew, the trio turned. In the doorway wearing his blue-green scrubs was Danny's nurse from earlier, Jacob. There was a broad grin stretched out on his face.

Danny shoved his hand under the itchy blanket of his hospital bed and tried for a smile that came as more of a grimace. "Jacob! Hi! Why are you here at this hour? Isn't it like, nine o'clock or something?" Danny could have sworn that the nurse had left a while ago, though he couldn't be sure of what the time was since he had fallen asleep. He should have asked when the last doctor had come in, like someone who knew how to keep information secret. _Damnit, this is an amateur mistake. My pride as a trickster is hurt._

"Kid, it's eleven forty," the ginger scoffed and walked over to check on the equipment. "I clocked in ten minutes ago. You really are bad at telling time, huh?" The man was quiet, after, checking on the things he needed to.

In the silence, Sam attempted to be sly. "So, how's your hearing?" The failed attempt made Danny cringe.

"Kid," Jacob chuckled, shaking his head. "That was as subtle as a school bus backing up. I think my hearing is better than yours, cause I heard half your conversation and saw a hand disappear while you didn't even hear a door swing open. But going back to that hand," he held out one of his own. "If I may?"

It was then that Danny realized that Tucker had been slowly moving closer to be a block between the young scientist and the nurse. He also felt the darker skinned boy shaking and sighed. "Tuck, calm down. It's his job to help people, and he swore an oath not to hurt anyone." Danny held out his hand cautiously. Even if he was going to give the man a bit of trust, he could still snatch the hand back at any time.

Jacob turned the hand over a couple of times, looking for something that none of them could think of. "Well, your skin isn't blue or green in any areas, so you're not quite a ghost. At least, the pair I saw when I was a kid were blue and green - the pigment in their skin." He let go of Danny's hand and leaned against a wall. "I used to be a wannabe ghost hunter, made a vlog of it. Only met two actual ghosts, though, and they basically told me to get out. Can I ask what happened to you?"

Danny tilted his head, held out his hand and quirked a brow. "Only if you can swear on the Styx you'll never tell anyone about this without my permission." There was something odd about Danny when he said that, beyond the fact that he had said it at all. His voice held some secondary sound to it, almost like an echo but too quiet to be picked out.

Jacob stared down at the hand presented in thought and behind his mask of curiosity, Danny was worried. Technically, Jacob could decline, go out and tell the doctors and the rest of the medical community, and then he'd be on the news as the freaky kid with weird powers. Normally, Danny was no conspiracy theorist, but he was aware that even though his parent's tech was patented, even down to weapons they'd never actually built, there was still some branch of the government that had bought some of their tech. Said branch of the government could come down, grab him, and drag Danny off to some facility for analysis and experimentation without any familial love to keep them away from the more potentially dangerous tests.

Thankfully, Jacob shook his hand with a smile. "I swear on the Styx that I will not tell anyone the information on how you came about powers from the netherworld unless you give me permission to do so." When their hands shook, a dull, barely there flash of green light flitted across their joined hands and left a cold tingle when they withdrew. "So, spill kid, how'd you get the abilities of a ghost?"

Danny took in a breath, the scent of anesthetics filling his nostrils, and let it out in a quick stream of words. "My parents built a portal to the other side to further their research of ghosts, and they had left it alone for a bit after the first try to open the gateway failed. While they were out, I was showing my friends the portal, and I was dared to go in." Jacob glanced at Tucker, who was discreetly pointing at Sam, and Danny waved his arms to regain attention before his friends began fighting. "So I went in, and tripped, and when I stood up, the portal was turning on. It was plugged in still." The beeping of the heart monitor began to rise slowly, and Sam gave Danny a worried look. "Before I could fully turn around and get out of it, I was caught in the electrical discharge from the portal activating and the event horizon swallowed me up. We're assuming I have these abilities because of whatever charge ectoplasm has, ran through me as well as electricity."

Tucker noticed the beeping had reached a pace that would have been normal for an average person, and reached behind him to rub Danny's back. "Dude, breathe. Slowly." Danny stared at his best friend's baret and let himself calm down while his nurse digested his story. The memory of yesterday felt sickeningly fresh, as though he had only just woken up from being zapped countless times in a row. "You ok now?"

"As ok as someone with ghost powers can be, I guess." Danny shrugged, flashing his friends a grin before turning his attention back to Jacob. "Satisfied with my spooky story?" This earned a snort of amusement from Sam and Jacob alike, painting a more genuine smile on the raven haired teen's face.

"As long as it's the truth, then yeah I am. It's an interesting story if I do say so myself." Jacob stretched and popped the joints in his back. "Well, I'll be back to check in on you in a bit. I have a feeling that your parents don't know medical science like a professional does." Not giving Danny a chance to respond to the sort of barb at his parents' medical ability, Jacob left the room with a wave.

A few minutes later and Jacob came back with a tray that held Roast beef, green beans, carrots, and roast potatoes, along with a fork and a cup. He set down the tray on a stand near Danny's bed and pushed it to him. "Bon apetit ghost kid." Jacob left again, but this time he didn't come back.

Danny let out a sigh and frowned at his food. It didn't look all that appetizing. "Tuck, did you maybe bring something more appealing to eat?" The meat connoisseur rolled his eyes and slid off of the bed. Walking over to the window he grabbed his back and fished out a couple of bagged sandwiches. "You are a godsend."

"I know," Tucker grinned and handed the other a sandwich as he settled back into his spot. "What would you do without me?"

"Eat a healthier diet, perhaps?" Danny laughed, and Tucker shot Sam a heatless glare, to which the goth offered a sunny smile. "Should we be worried about the guy that you just told about your powers to?"

"He swore on the Styx not to tell," Danny shrugged before taking a bite of his sandwich. "He can't say anything without my permission, so it's no big deal."

"That's another thing, Danny," Tucker spoke up after swallowing his mouthful of ham, cheese, and mayo. "What was up with that 'swear on the Styx' thing? I know you're into greek mythology n all because of the ties to astronomy and astrology but..."

"You never thought I believed in any of it?" Danny raised a brow and scratched the back of his neck. "To tell you the truth, I don't. Well, not exactly." When the contrastive friends looked to him for further explanation, Danny sighed and shrugged. "I'm not sure how to explain it. I just _knew_ that if I had him swear on the Styx, it'd work. And when we shook hands, his felt warm and then it was like there was some kinda spark of cold." Danny waved his hands around a bit, trying to convey the experience with body language if he could. "I felt like I could trust that he won't tell anyone. I still do."

"Maybe that's a ghost thing," Sam suggested into the quiet following the statement. "Ya know, making deals and all that? What if the portal is an opening into the Styx itself?"

"Yes," Danny rolled his eyes with a grin. "I'm the new Achilles, cursed to be shot down by the god of the sun for spilling blood on his altar." Sam gave Danny a puzzled look, and he took another bite of his sandwich, speaking with his mouth full. "Achilles' original story had him being killed by Apollo. He was so driven to war and violence that even when Aphrodite and Eros - the gods of Love themselves - made him fall in love with the guy he was chasing after, he still ended up decapitating him when he said 'I'll kiss you over my dead body.' Apollo didn't like that blood was spilled on his altar, and so he killed Achilles for his crime."

"That..." Sam paused, tilting her head. "That is a much better and reasonable story than the Illiad actually." Danny nodded in satisfaction that he had gotten yet another person to know the real story of Achilles and scarfed down the rest of his food. "How did you find that out?"

"All ya gotta do is look things up, Sam." Danny grinned and drank some of the water from his tray. "The information is there; you just have to look for it. I was bored and needed a subject for my english report." Leaning back Danny lifted his hand to his face and concentrated on just his pinky. It vanished from sight, and he poked Sam's arm with it, snickering when the goth startled at the sensation. "How do my fingers feel?" He changed each finger invisible in turn, the previous one returning to sight, and poked both of his friends until they poked him back.

"About as cold as Sam when she's on her warpath for change." Tucker stuck his tongue out at the goth and yelped when she 'gently' shoved him off of the bed. "Or anytime, obviously."

"Can you please not bruise our geek's head?" Danny pouted at Sam, though he wasn't putting even half the effort into it that he normally would. "I need him to help me program my model rockets." Tucker let out a huff of mock indignation, and Sam shrugged, ruffling Danny's head.

"You're right, who else could help you set up your space age pranks on April Fools day?" Danny laughed when Tucker laid heavily on top of him. "Congrats, Foley; you live for now."

Tucker crossed an arm over his head and let out a dramatic groan. "I'm so grateful to you, oh mistress of the damned, that I have been granted another day in the land of the living." The three of them broke out into a fit of laughter and soon went back to Danny trying to figure out his newest abilities and defaulting back to TV when it tired him out too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Danny's secret was kept because the rest of the town was oblivious and not paying attention to him, nor was a half ghost hybrid a thing anyone would think up except the craziest of fanatics (Wes) so I think it'd be hard for them to keep it a secret from hospital staff at the beginning of learning the secret. Plus, I like the idea of him having a medical professional or two in on his secret so that he doesn't have to avoid doctor's visits and whatnot. If you're wondering about the Achilles thing, I've found a sorta senpai in Dr.ForgottenFables on ffn, and I have also looked it up and i dunno if that's the older telling but it's A telling of the story of Achilles that feels more appropriate a death for the invincible soldier son of a sea nymph than being shot in the heel by a coward.


	6. ALERT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FIRST DRAFT FO THE STORY IS UNDONE AND REPURPOSED

**So, this is Rex, author that y'all love, and I've recently realized that this could be better than it is.  But I know that y'all like this how it is so far, so I'm gonna discontinue this version and start anew.  Watch out for the update of the next Infinite Realms story, and have a wonderful day.**


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